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It hurt. It hurt more than she had expected it to. The lyrics of one song in particular felt like having a bucket of salt poured over an open wound, and she flinched as the memories all came flooding back. It was a song which had soared up the charts. Women had bought it in droves. She’d even been approached about having it used in the film score of a romantic comedy, but she had said no—even though her agent had hit the roof when she’d told him. She hadn’t been able to bear the thought of having it associated with comedy when it symbolised the bleakest time of her life. In fact, she’d always regretted releasing it as a single. It had been played on the radio so much that for a while she’d stopped listening in order to preserve her sanity.
She’d written it when she’d got back from finding Dante in bed with that blonde, pouring all her feelings out into a song because she hadn’t been able to bear the shame of telling anyone else what had happened. She’d entitled the track ‘Her’ and the words were still unbearably painful to hear.
Does she know the things you said
When you were lying in my bed?
Your words of love became a slur
When you whispered them to her.
Justina wanted to scream. To turn the music off and with it the images it brought back—but she couldn’t move. She was marooned in a great tub of bath water, feeling and looking like a beached whale, her usual agility long gone. So she closed her eyes and waited for the track to finish.
The water was almost cold by the time she carefully got out, hoping that Dante would have taken the hint and gone.
But he hadn’t gone. He was still talking on the phone, looking out of the window as he conversed in his native tongue. He must have heard her enter the room—even though she was moving soundlessly on bare feet—for he turned round, his eyes narrowing when he saw her.
Maybe she should have put on some jeans and a sweater, not the full-length silken robe which she’d wrapped tightly over her baby bump. But why should she start turning her whole life around to fit in with him? She was dressed for bed and she intended to go to bed—perhaps he might take the hint and leave her to it.
His voice slowed as he watched her push a lock of damp hair back behind her ear, and he said something in Italian before cutting the connection and sliding the phone back into his jacket pocket.
‘I thought you’d have gone by now,’ she said ungraciously as she slumped down onto the sofa.
‘I was listening to the music. Unsurprisingly, the acoustics in your apartment are the best I’ve ever heard.’ His smile was brief, but damning. ‘Tell me, do you always listen to your own songs when you’re lying in the bath?’
If she said ‘never’, wouldn’t that indicate that he could still unsettle her enough to make her behave in an uncharacteristic way? A
nd she didn’t have to justify herself to him.
‘That’s none of your business. I can listen to what I like. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still here—not least because that last song must have made you feel intensely uncomfortable. Or maybe not.’ Her eyes challenged him with a bravado she was far from feeling. ‘Maybe it feeds your massive ego to hear yourself written about in a song.’
‘Not that particular song, no,’ he reflected. ‘It was unforgivable for you to take our private disagreement and throw it into the public arena.’
‘Perhaps if you hadn’t behaved like a total sleaze then I might have found something good to write about you.’
‘“A total sleaze”?’
His eyes narrowed, but she could tell by the way that he was tapping his forefinger against his lips that he was furious.
‘Is that what you think I am, Justina?’
He was walking towards her now, with a look on his face which was making her shiver. Actually, it was making her do much more than shiver. It was making the soft, curling excitement at the pit of her belly slowly begin to unfurl. She knew she ought to move, to run away—but her slumped position on the sofa meant that she wasn’t able to run anywhere. And deep down she knew she didn’t want to.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think you are,’ she said.
‘No?’
‘No. You’re nothing to me any more, Dante.’
For a moment their gazes locked, and Justina held her breath as he walked round the back of the sofa to stand behind her, so that she couldn’t see him. She could feel a strange kind of tension begin to shimmer in the air around them.
‘I think it does matter.’ There was a pause as he brushed a fingertip over the back of her neck. ‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Brutal, but honest,’ he mused, his fingertip retracing the path it had just taken, as if he was fascinated by the innocuous column of flesh he found there.
She tried to fight against the sudden whisper of pleasure that touch had given her. ‘What are you doing?’
